To Understand
by Feo Takahari
Summary: Bonnie doesn't understand why the new guard seems so familiar.


**Night 1**

There's someone in the office. Someone new.

I don't know why they keep coming. Maybe they want to join the band, like me and Chica. But we don't need anyone else, so we just keep them in the back. I don't know if they're happy, waiting there and never playing, but I don't know if I'm happy when I stand on the stage with my guitar. I guess there are a lot of things bunnies don't know.

Freddy wants me to look. He doesn't say it, but I know it, so I go. Through the dining room, down the hallway . . . There's no way to get lost. Every chair, every picture, even every shadow is in the same place as always.

Hiding in the shadows outside the office, I take a good look at the new guy, just this once. I like to see their faces before they go in costumes and start looking like everybody else.

Holy cow, he's old. They're always grown-ups, but this one's almost a geezer. His hair's going gray, and he's got those lines on his face like he's lived forever and spent most of it worried about something. He won't put up a fight like most of them. I'm not sure he can even get up, never mind run.

Then he turns on the light and looks at me, and I freeze.

I'm used to feeling cold, with all this metal in me, but this is way more than cold. It's like my brain's a piece of paper, and someone's writing on it, and someone else is going along with a big black marker and crossing out all the words before I can read them. Those bright blue eyes . . .

Before I can snap out of it, he slams the door in my face.

I hang around the door for a little while, but he doesn't open it again before I give up and leave.

**Night 2**

He's good.

Every time I hide from him, backstage or in the closet, the camera lights up like he's tracking me. Every time I stand outside the door, trying not to freeze, he closes it before I can move.

I don't understand why he feels so familiar. If I try to think about it, I get into "was," and that's not a word I use much. I _am_ Bonnie the bunny, and I play the guitar. Freddy is, and Chica is, and even Foxy is. The suits in the back have a "was," since they used to be guards, but we're not like them. We don't change.

But the way he looks at me before he closes the door . . . it's not the same as how the other guards looked. He's not afraid, he's sad, and maybe tired. Maybe that's part of his "was," from before he became an old geezer.

Maybe if I knew what he used to be, it would be easier to put him in a suit.

**Night 3**

Freddy leaves the stage.

He doesn't do that much. It's just me and Chica, and sometimes Foxy, getting the guards and putting them in the suits. I think he wants to, but something keeps him back.

Do I want to? Does it even matter? It's what we do at Freddy Fazbear's.

I never used to think about things like that. I never used to listen to the sound of my feet while I walked down the hall, or look at the darkness and see anything besides a place where the light wasn't. I never wondered why this place has no windows looking out, or asked myself what might be outside. I have a "was" now, and I don't think I like it.

Freddy will get him. He'll stuff him in a suit, and then all this will go away.

**Night 4**

He speaks to me, and I hear him. I don't know how, through that thick metal door, but I hear him.

"Do you remember me, R****?"

I hear the word, but I can't remember it. I feel like I'm scraping my knee against gravel, only it's not my knee, it's my mind. But when did I have a real knee to scrape, or gravel to scrape it against?

"Damn it," he mutters. "I don't even know if it's you. It's just . . . the way you lean in, when you're about to come in. It's like how you used to look when you won at hide and seek. I just want to know if it's you, R****. I want . . ."

_A suit? _I think. _A place in the back room?_

"To understand," he says. "I want to understand. So if it's you . . ."

_It's Bonnie_, I think, but that's not true anymore. Bonnie is my "was." I don't know what I am now. So instead, I think _it's me_, and I know he hears me. Over and over, _it's me._

**Night 5**

"It's easy to believe in a plan," he says, "as long as things are happening to other people. Flood, fever, or famine-it's fate, or it's God's will, or it's because they screwed up."

I don't know how long I've been standing out here, listening through the door. Time is funny at Freddy's-you can lose six hours in what feels like ten minutes. I should probably go hide so I can try to get in again, but I feel like listening.

"I still believed in it when S***** died. There was some kind of complication when M*** was born-I didn't understand it, but I thought it was my fault for pushing her to have more kids when we were both so old. When M*** died of a fever, I thought I should have taken him to the hospital sooner, and when a drunk driver killed O***, I thought I should have watched her closer. I blamed myself for everything, and maybe-"

I hear the other door slam closed. I guess Chica got too close.

He doesn't even lose his stride. "-I should have. Maybe it was all my fault. But you, R**** . . . There was no reason for what happened to you. Nothing I did, and nothing you did. I thought if I came back here, then maybe somehow, I could understand why."

He goes silent for a very long time. I don't hear what he says next until I'm already walking away.

"Then maybe God could take me, too."

**Night 6**

Foxy makes a run for it this time. He goes right up to the door and pounds on it. But somehow, I feel like the guard wanted that to happen.

He's stopped talking, and his eyes are cold. He always closes the door just a moment before I would have gone through. It's like he's testing us, timing what we do and when.

I'm not afraid anymore. Whatever he's trying to do, I don't think it's bad. He's not like us, and he's not like the other guards. He's just a lonely old geezer who talks too much.

**Night 7**

Even before I start moving, I know this night is different.

I'm thinking clearer, and moving faster. I rush up to the door, sneak off, and rush back up again, and he can barely close it in time. I'm not frozen anymore. I'm as warm as the sun, and I keep getting hotter and hotter . . .

All of a sudden, I understand what he's doing.

The camera doesn't follow me this time. All it does is flicker on and off over Pirate's Cove, keeping an eye on Foxy so he doesn't make a run for it. To keep the rest of us out, the guard only uses the lights and the doors. They're all he needs.

I'm having fun, playing with him like this. Even losing, getting so hot it feels like my fur is going to burn, I'm having fun. I can't remember the last time I felt like this.

He can't keep it up, not at this speed. Foxy gets out twice, and he hits the door hard enough to drain the power. By five-thirty in the morning, all the lights in the office have gone out.

Freddy waits in the doorway, playing that music box song. I wonder where it comes from. I guess I'll never know.

The guard just sits there, not moving a muscle. His lips are pressed flat, and his eyes stare at Freddy. I don't know what he's feeling, but I don't think he's scared.

It's finally over. All of this will go back to normal . . .

Then Freddy starts twitching and fizzing, little yellow lines popping out of his neck. His music goes all funny, really high then really low. He falls over in the doorway, blocking my way.

In a moment, I fall over, too.

"I still don't understand it," the guard says quietly. "But at least I could end it. Forgive me, Robert . . ."

A word runs through my mind, something I hear kids say when they come here for parties. I try to say it, but all I can do is whisper.

"Da . . . ddy . . ."

He can't go to me, not with Freddy in the way. But he watches over me while the world goes dark, repeating a name I finally understand.


End file.
